


Those Within Shadow

by Coldest_Fire



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: AU, AU is gold on the periodic table, Canon Incest, Detective!Edith, F/F, F/M, I almost forgot to warn for canon child abuse, I am OT3 trash, I take a lot of timeline liberties in this au, Modern AU, Multi, Oops, They were young. They were alone in the attic. There may be flashbacks, also the underage warning is for things Thomas and Lucille canonically did, cannon horror that was for love, rape warning only in flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8292152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: After the untimely death of her father, Edith swore she was leaving behind police work for good, until his final case file surfaces. Reeling from the revelation that her father had died investigating the man she loved, Edith agree to one last case, if only to prove to herself that Thomas and his sister were innocent. The problem is, that's getting more and more difficult to prove...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story for this fandom, and my first story not on Fanfic.net... I may update sporadically, as I have a loaded work schedule and am doing NaNoWriMo with my original story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be inserting chapter warnings. Ignore these to avoid spoilers. 
> 
> Chapter warning: vague references to entirely too many things, minor character death

_Ghosts are real._

At very least, they were real to one child who cringed away from shadows and two who lived within them. Ghosts seen only by those in need of consolation, or reproach, occasionally a warning. 

One child swore shadows could whisper, could touch her with long, spindle-fingered hands and whisper in dry voices both familiar and foreign. Even that they bore a warning, a message to beware of things she didn’t yet understand. It was only her father who kept her from the hospitals, where it all could have ended years in advance. The detective didn’t see what his daughter saw in the shadows, there was not nearly enough evidence. What he did see, however, was a child grieving her mother. It would be no help to anyone to send her away to be watched and medicated and forced to part with whatever illusion made the loss more bearable. So as his child avoided the shadows, all he did was leave her a night light. _Surely,_ these fantasies of ghosts would stop when they had run their course, he said. 

Another saw the ghosts, stared deep into their soulless eyes. They couldn’t touch her now. She thought no one could, until one mistake sent her into a padded room full of living nightmares. Ghosts sought to instil into her the proper regret, though it wasn’t ghosts that put her away into a closet with it’s own demons. It was people. The shadows were her home, where where she could thrive, because no matter what they shrieked, no matter how close they got, ghosts were in one aspect, safer than people. They could no longer touch her, or her brother. It was both fortunate and unfortunate that she was without him. She could not protect him here, could not protect him from the poisons and the studies, the web of lies that caught her up. But in the isolation, she grew to prefer the people as ghosts, all people, but the only one she ever missed. She grew hard as diamond there, but also colder. Perhaps a person could be their own ghost.

And the last, he looked away from the ghosts. They couldn’t hurt him but in the most visceral of ways. _Surely_ , he wasn’t worth this suffering. He wasn’t worth the lives his survival had cost. Even when away, bouncing school to school to school, he never forgot the ghosts. He never forgot his sister. He lived in the shadows in necessity, but craved the light. It was a shame that to bring any light into his shadows would surely extinguish it. Any attempt to reclaim the light just meant another skeleton in their combined closet.

And even as years passed, not one of them would grow quite old enough they could forget it. No, even before they crossed paths, they all knew, deep down, what they had seen.

* * *

 

 

Being one herself, Edith was pretty much used to seeing police officers at her door, so seeing Ferguson was no cause for alarm to her, despite the late hour and her father’s continued absence. All of her concern was because of his worried look. “Will?” she asked him, as she opened the door. “I-if you’re looking for my father, he’s probably still at the station. What’s wrong?”

When he opened his mouth to speak, “Edith, I’m so sorry, there’s been an accident,” was all she heard before the younger detective started to shake her head. _No_. No her father couldn’t have died. After everything that he’d faced, he couldn’t have been in something so simple as a car accident. It wasn’t right. No. No he was much too young, he was turning sixty next week. She was much too young to be alone in the world. The rest of the man’s words all blurred into each other, watching his lips move up and down, but just hearing a dull ringing. 

Without warning, she pitched forward, arms wrapping around the man who’d lit the candles on her fifth birthday cake, who’d picked her up from dance lessons, and, like her father, had encouraged her to join them on the force. The man who had now become the bearer of the worst news she could have heard. That night, Edith didn’t sleep, desperately looking for some kind of sign, for a ghost, for anything. Just that morning, they’d shared french toast, before he went to work and she took her day off to write. She’d emailed him her latest chapter at lunch, and he’d sent her a list of cold cases he thought the pair of them could crack, especially with Dr McMichael in forensics helping them. Normal things. The next day, they had plans, he was going to get his hair trimmed, and then they’d head for ice cream, a movie, _something._ Saturdays were sacred.

This Saturday was just empty. Blearily, Edith descended the stairs later than usual, rifling through the fridge for something that might stimulate her into eating. Everything in the house seemed different. It reminded her of him. The ding in her mug mocked her, the blankets provided her no warmth. The glossy smiles in all of the pictures along the walls seemed so finite. Twenty four hours was a lifetime apart from the day before it. 

But more days passed. When, eventually she returned to work, she could just see the sympathetic looks, hear them softly whispering. _“Isn’t that Carter’s daughter?”_ They’d ask. People made excuses to see her, to talk. She knew a psych eval was coming to see if she could stay. Everywhere in her office there were ghosts of the most insidious variety, the kind that were indigenous to a person’s memories, the same ones that she faced in all of her familiar places, home, work, the studio she’d danced at, the ice cream shop. There was a reason people called their favourite places their haunts: even when they were gone, they could never really leave. They left little impressions, little voids. It was like the spaces her father had occupied were empty spaces, voids that hurt more to see than any phantom.  

She was not, however, alone, even after leaving the force without really saying goodbye. Alan McMichael sought her out. Edith had known Alan from childhood, but hadn’t really gotten to know him until he lost his father and she lost her mother. _Lost._ As an author, she wished she had a better wording. Saying you lost someone sounded as if you’d been careless, and inattentive, and this had been the opposite. They’d tried too hard. They’d been at the hospital for long hours, and in the support group even longer. Children coping with loss. Edith used to hide behind her notebook and pretend to listen, whilst planning a chapter. She’d even told Alan about the ghosts, despite that his sister told everyone else in the school, and his mother had insisted she needed to be institutionalized, or at very least kept away from her children. Alan had refused that.

He was there the days she refused to do anything but write until nine at night, and wanted to go for breakfast/dinner, and the nights when she’d texted at ludicrous hours, about plot ideas, or about her father. He was even there when she decided to take a job with the florist who’d worked at her father’s funeral, more to kill time than to make money, though she wanted no part of her inheritance either. After all, that money meant her father was really gone. Alan had come to her work every day for weeks, around the end of her shifts, with drinks from the coffee shop on the corner. The pair of them could talk for hours, and typically did, Edith sipping hot chocolate while Alan sipped at a cup of coffee, or tea, depending on the day. 

“Maybe dads just don’t become ghosts,” he’d suggested, the day she’d asked why he thought she’d never again seen her father. Alan had waited years and never glimpsed his own, after all. The alternative was to call Edith insane for having seen her mother, but he’d never believe that. This girl had supported him when he’d transitioned from medical school to forensics, from saving the living to diagnosing the dead. He’d been in love with Edith from when they were children, and it was time he was there for her as she had always been for him. If she said her mother had come to her to warn her about… about something crimson, the he would be on the lookout for the offending shade of red.

There were many things someone who was very nearly a doctor could fix, but the absence of a loved one wasn’t among them. What he could do, however was fill the void a little, and that he did. He kept her company until she was alright on her own again, and even then met her every Friday for that same coffee in the same place. What he could do was spend hours pouring over her artistically written ghost story, offering what advice he could about it, and helping her to find a publisher, for once she’d completed it.


End file.
